The Orbitel Mobile Communications Ltd joint venture between Racal Electronics Plc and Plessey Co Plc has won the first contract to be awarded by a cellular operator to supply mobile communication equipment for the pan-European digital network. The UKP250m order placed by Racal Vodafone will exploit both Orbitel’s agreements, with L M Ericsson AB and Matra Communications SA, to bundle and market each others’ kit in order to tender for contracts. Orbitel’s Swedish partner is to supply AXE digital switches while the one-month-old liason with Matra will jointly develop the base station controllers. Matra will contribute hardware components which are currently implemented in the French Radiocomm 2000 analogue mobile net, and the two will jointly develop Groupe Speciale Mobile-compatible software. The Vodafone contract will initially provide coverage for 60,000 subscribers in Greater London and Southern England but the network is expected to serve 350m people, once coverage has been extended nationally and is linked into the European network. Equipment conforming to the Groupe Speciale Mobile standard will include base stations manufactured at the Orbitel factory in Nottingham, base station controllers, and digital switches. Orbitel tendered for five contracts, and has already been rejected by the other UK operator, British Telecom and Securicor’s Cellnet, which is believed to have opted for Motorola equipment, although the company has not confirmed this. Time will tell whether the Matra-Ericsson co-operation alliances will work in Orbitel’s favours by putting business its way. Ericsson tendered for 14 contracts and while Orbitel managing director Mike Pinches does not expect to provide any equipment for the West German network where Ericsson has partnered Siemens, he is optimistic of scooping up business if Ericsson scores in other countries. Pinches was bullish about the company’s prospects in the cellular mobile market which he forecast would grow to UKP800m a year, with a majority of business flowing from the terminal equipment side, rather than the provision of network infrastructure. But Pinches also said that he expects the biggest obstacle to be overcome will be making supposedly hand-held equipment portable – at the moment the technology is the size of a cooker.
